


The Ties Now Unbound

by Maldevinine



Category: Blood (Video Game), Duke Nukem (Video Game), Quake (Video Game), RWBY, Unreal (Video Games)
Genre: Excessive Violence, Gen, Post Season 4, Post-Canon, The Gods Deserve It, Villian Focused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:36:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24605557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldevinine/pseuds/Maldevinine
Summary: When a God dies, a reality shakes with it's death. When men find a taste for killing Gods, all realities shake in fear.
Kudos: 5





	The Ties Now Unbound

The death of a God is a major event, as the domain and powers that it held shake loose and all realities shift in response. Even when the God has made plans for it’s own death it will not go quietly. For the mortal on the other end of those plans, it’s a life ending event. Caleb found all of this out when all the knowledge of Tchernobog, The Ties That Bind, Divider Of Reality, poured into his head.

He lived sixteen human lives faster than he could blink. He saw all of reality grow from the collision of forces that were beyond his imagining while simultaneously having his imaginings forced outward to encompass what he now knew. He went mad from the revelations, then he went mad from the power, then he went mad from the duties. Tchernobog had picked well however, and Caleb’s will restored his mind as time passed and memories of sixteen recoveries from this exact event came to the surface. Caleb picked himself up from the ground where he had collapsed amongst the body of what had been a God, brushed the worst of the gore off his coat and reseated his hat upon his head.

Overlaid behind his eyes were the cracks that Tchernobog’s temporary death had inflicted upon reality. He could reach out and touch them now, he could repair them with just a thought. But he didn’t. He stepped into the closest one and fell into the spaces between. For Caleb had just killed a God for no other reason than because it had pissed him off. Why would he stop at just one?

A mind trained in physical space and it’s demands had no proper frame of reference for the spaces in between realities. Caleb had already gone mad several times and died at least once, so for him the shedding of his preconceptions about the nature of existence was a familiar feeling. Tchernobog took over, defining the borders of those realities that were nearby, logging the cracks that stretched between them and looking for the telltale signs of Godly power meddling in realities. There was one nearby that was torn between two Gods that squabbled like children, marks of their power flashing all over the membrane that separated it from the space beyond. Even Tchernobog was upset with them as it smashed the knowledge of how carelessly used power like that could destroy the things that made reality real and force Tchernobog to repair the spreading damage into Caleb's mind.

There were rules for everything, each reality having it’s own list, and Caleb’s will tied to Tchernobog’s awareness found the rules for the God-blighted reality. They were similar enough to what Caleb had been born among to make surviving there possible but bizarre clauses and exceptions abounded. The one that was first on the list of things for them to deal with was that entry required a team of four. Caleb/Tchernobog stretched outwards, and felt for those who might join them.

* * *

The slipgate tore open space within the body of the beast and replaced it with his body. Around him the backlash from the gate liquefied flesh which poured in a black waterfall over him and ran into the pits of lava that the creature had dwelled among. It ran off his hair and drained over his eyes and into his gasping mouth when he fell to his hands and knees. His coughing fit could not clear the oily feel from inside his mouth and he lost the strength to hold himself up and out of the pool that used to be the monster that was attempting to invade Earth. He closed his eyes as he fell but that didn’t stop the fluid from stabbing into his brain.

He came back to a rhythmic stabbing in his right arm, like a vaccination needle repeated. He was on his back, he was still in the chamber and there was a man in a black longcoat and wide brimmed hat leaning over him. The man tucked a small doll back into his coat.

“Name!” the looming man demanded. Instincts from boot camp betrayed the ranger.

“Flynnyarlthotaggart,” he replied, his lips and tongue moving in shapes he was sure he should not be capable of to form the word. Even the word wasn’t right. He had two names didn’t he? A first and a last, one given and one inherited? But there was so much more now in his head, things he could remember learning but the way he remembered them could not have happened.

“Title!” came the next demand.

“The Herald! I shall be Known and Understood!” he said without thinking

With words to grab on to, the memories that he could not have sorted themselves into things he knew. He was Flynn Taggart, Ranger attached to Operation: Counterstrike. He was also Nyarlthotep, the Herald, who had corrupted realms and pushed beyond realities to become known by all. He had four limbs, not forty and now that he could remember how the set that he had worked he used them to push himself upright. Dried God gunk shifted on his face and blocked his eyes, so he wiped it off with his tongue. It took a few seconds for what he had just done to catch up as he re-examined his body and centred himself but when it did he retched and spat, his tongue uncurling from his mouth and his cheeks shifting to allow it out.

“Yeah, you got a bit of God in you. While you are right to be concerned, you will find that not everything you are now is a disadvantage.”

The looming man stood up, his long coat still clean despite what he had been kneeling in. He reached up and grabbed the teleport target as it circled over the lava, his hand somehow affixing to a thing that didn’t exist. He pulled it down out of the air, it’s path opening a slipgate behind it.

“I am Caleb and Tchernobog, The Ties That Bind. If you will follow me, I shall explain what has happened to you.”

Caleb stepped through the slipgate he had just opened. Flynn looked around at the tiny rock on which he stood and the expanse of lava between him and the way he came in. There really wasn’t another option but to follow Caleb.

* * *

The Skaarj Hive Queen had been the centre around which the whole vessel was built. The sensors had fed into the Queen’s own eyes and the Queen’s limbs had been the engines that moved it through space. With the Queen now dead there was no way to adjust the course that it’s panicked deaths throes had set. Systems all across the ship were failing as they were ordered to do things that should never have been possible. Unfortunately that included the teleporters that were the only way out of the heavily defended Queen’s Chamber.

She hammered at the control panel for the teleporter with the butt of her stinger until it cracked, then tore it open and stared at the semi-familiar Skaarj technology inside. She pulled a likely looking section of circuitry out of place which left a pile of exposed wiring. Ejecting the magazine from the stinger she faced the tarydium crystal inwards and rammed it into place. Power surged through the system and there was a little flash of green from the teleporter. Before she could step into it, two men stepped out.

The only living humans she had seen in weeks and they were a physical impossibility. One wore light military fatigues with oily black armour plates stuck to them, the other wore a long black coat and a broad brimmed hat as would be used to keep the sun off his head. The one in the hat spoke, but nothing that came out of his mouth made sense. She wasted no time in telling him that and tried to get past him to the teleporter.

The other man grabbed her, removing her hope that this was just some particularly bizarre stress-related hallucination. He spoke to the first man and her shock when his words made sense must have shown on her face.

“Caleb, she can’t understand you. What are we going to do?”

The man named Caleb just gestured back to her.

“Uh, sorry ma’am. My name is Flynn and this is Caleb. We’re here to save you.”

Caleb spoke some more.

“Do you have a name and title?” Flynn asked. “He’s rather insistent about it.”

“I don’t have a name, they burned that out of my skull when they took me. Prisoner 849 is all I’ve been for months. The Nali called me ‘Messiah’ if that counts.”

A discussion between Flynn and Caleb followed. The two understood each other perfectly, even though she could only follow what Flynn was saying and neither of them changed languages to make it easier on the other. Flynn turned back to her at the end.

“Well Pri, if you do that thing to power up the teleporter again, Caleb will get us out of here.”

Prisoner 849 plucked the spent top crystal out of the magazine, letting the spring in the base push the next one in line before ramming it back into the mangled control panel. The teleporter flashed green again but this time Caleb’s hand was there to grab the flash of light and tear it open into a full portal. With the mothership dying round her, she really had nowhere to go but to follow them.

* * *

It was a good day. He’d been invited to another talk show, his new razor ad campaign (“Getting those balls smooth as steel”) was going great according to the sales figures and he’d just had the pinball room in the penthouse refitted to hold another two machines. So why was he here, in the viewing area of Area 51, looking at the recovered artifacts from three back-to-back alien invasions? Looking at the ranks of weaponry brought back memories of him using almost every one of them. Looking at the examples of alien architecture and ship building reminded him of the time he’d spent running through them. Right at the back of the room were intact examples of technology. There were the shrink pads and the jetpacks that he’d had to use to make his way through all the places he’d fought. They even had the teleporter that the Rigeletians had used to pull him straight out of that talk show, back before he was famous.

Wait. He was sure that teleporter shouldn’t be on.

He had his gold-plated 1911 out as the three were stepping out of the teleporter beam. They certainly weren’t aliens and if that woman hadn’t had her head shaved she’d be kind of cute. Still, the one dressed like an old-time cowboy had quickdrawn a revolver in response and that meant they were probably seconds away from this becoming exciting.

“Hey! Nobody shoot!” yelled the one in the military outfit.

“I can shoot you now, or I can shoot you later. I’m free all day,” was the reply.

The cowboy looked excited at those words, re-holstering his pistol under the coat. “Name,” he demanded.

“Are you serious? How can you not know Duke Nukem?”

“Title!”

“I’m the King. Hail to the king babe.” Duke nodded at the shaven woman as he said this. It was never a wrong time to get some flirting in.

“The King in his trophy room? Is all this your spoils of war?”

“Fuck yeah. I shot every gun and I shot every alien in this building. I saved the world, and then I went and saved it again. And then I saved it a third time, so don’t get any ideas about coming here and taking over.”

“If you’re the King, where’s your adoring subjects?” the cowboy mocked. “Why are you standing in the past rather than building the future?”

“Even the King’s gotta take some time to himself.”

“I think you’re bored. I think you built your ego around being a peerless warrior and now you have nothing to fight you don’t know who you are.”

Duke had his pistol lined up on the cowboy’s head even before the sentence was finished.

“I am Caleb, The Ties That Bind. This is Flynn, The Herald, and Prisoner 849, The Messiah of Nali. I am building a team to kill Gods, and there’s a place for you on it.”

“Gods? Can’t have you going around killing Gods without me, somebody might get the wrong impression that you’re more badarse than I am.” Duke holstered his pistol and asked one of the most important questions of his life.

“There will be babes, right? I’m not in unless there’s babes.”

“Worlds full of them,” Caleb promised darkly. “Now watch the first step, it’s a mite shocking.”

* * *

Raven stepped through the portal after yet another argument with her brother. Even having seen his “professor” die he wouldn’t accept that his side was losing. Still, she was right and she’d live to say I Told You So.

The Branwen camp was exactly as it should be, somewhere between chaos and organisation. Vernal nodded to her as she set her foot back in the camp. She went to close the portal behind her but it resisted. Vernal picked up that something was wrong almost as fast as Raven did and both of them had weapons out when a blond man in a red singlet and blue jeans fell out of it. Raven swung straight for him, not expecting the blow to land but needing to see what he could do. To her surprise it hit and she was even more surprised when it left a small cut, much smaller than it should have made against an unarmoured opponent. The man punched at her, but he was clearly out of practice at hand to hand and Raven dodged easily to get some distance.

Vernal was facing a man in some sort of loose uniform painted in a pattern that would fade into the trees. He was just weathering the blows but Vernal was sure that the armour plates were moving to intercept her strikes and she did not want to know what else he could do if he had room to move. A spray of Ice Dust crystals from a third person stepping through the portal forced her back, but when the crystals didn’t burst into ice blocks where they hit she jumped back into combat.

That was enough time for the fourth member of the team to step through the portal and close it behind himself. Raven found herself struck hard in the side of the head by a person she couldn’t see and that gave the man she was fighting time to wrestle her to the ground. He couldn’t punch, but he knew how to make a pin. She was left staring at the newcomer as he put a doll back inside his long coat and spoke in a language that sounded like it was designed to pronounce the doom of worlds. Raven stared on unblinking. The newcomer called out to the man fighting Vernal, who had trapped her weapons between shifting plates of armour and took a break from their barehanded fight to open his mouth. All in the camp heard and understood his words.

“I am Flynn, The Herald, follower of Caleb, The Ties That Bind. This is Prisoner 849, The Messiah of Nali, and Duke Nukem, The King. We have come to kill a God. Where do we find it?”

**Author's Note:**

> More dumb ideas. Inspired by a similar concept on Fanfic.net by somebody who I didn't think was doing it justice.


End file.
